Northern Spain End to End: The Pyrenees, the Bardenas and the Galician Coast

Editor's note

Frías calls itself the smallest city in Spain and has around 250 residents to prove it. The aire is new, takes about forty vans and looks up at the castle; they rated its service point among the best they had used. Two euros gets you into the castle, and the 14th-century bridge over the Ebro runs 143 metres on the line of a Roman road — in summer people swim off it.

Editor's note

A ski car park at altitude with nothing to it but cowbells and marmots, which is the point: the trailhead is right there. The walk up to the Ibones de Anayet is 13.7 km with 730 m of climbing, topping out around 2,200 m at a lake you cannot swim in, following red and white waymarks with cows and wild ponies on the way. The last 400 metres of descent come straight down the ski slopes.

Editor's note

Over the pass and down to a free aire on the shore of the Lac de Fabrèges, with cattle wandering between the vans — their bells cost Richard and Jackie a night's sleep on the second night. The cable car and the little train to the Lac d'Artouste is €28 each and worth booking the day before: the earliest slot they could get on the day was 13:30. The train takes fifty minutes along the mountainside, you get about ninety minutes at the lake, and there is a steep fifty-metre pull up from the end station to the water.

Editor's note

Their favourite campsite of the trip and the one they said they would go back to: spotless facilities, a bar and a small shop, good signal, and river swimming fifty metres away. Saturdays get cramped and some sections have no marked pitches. Three nights gives you the shuttle bus from Torla up to the Pradera for the balcony route — about 11 km and 700 m of climbing over five hours, mostly in forest with two exposed kilometres above the valley — plus the easy 5 km riverside path down to Broto for pizza. After a heatwave the Broto waterfall was nearly dry.

Editor's note

A few hours rather than a night — there is no shade on the aire and it was too hot to stay. Long enough to walk up to the medieval square on the hill, which is the reason to stop.

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The aire looks out over the plains. The walkways through the Vero gorge are a 3 km loop with about 200 m of climbing, on timed tickets — they took the 18:00 slot to miss the heat — and take you along bolted catwalks, over a suspension bridge and past prehistoric cave paintings in the rock.

Editor's note

Six nights here was not the plan. The van threw a red oil-pressure warning with no amber first, and they spent about twenty-five hours at an industrial estate waiting for recovery before finding a dealer slot. The aire they waited it out on opened in 2026 and is one of the best on the trip: hook-up on the paid side, showers, washing-up, full service point, about twenty paid bays and twenty free ones. The village has a supermarket, bars doing a €20 menú del día, and cave dwellings cut into the cliffs above. The Bardenas Reales starts at the end of the road — they rode out into it on gravel early, before the heat.

Editor's note

Two nights in wine country while they waited on the garage. Haro is walkable from the campsite and the station quarter puts several of the big bodegas within a few hundred metres of each other, so you can taste and eat tapas without driving. Vitoria-Gasteiz is twenty minutes up the road — the Fiat dealer there diagnosed and reset the van in half an hour at no charge, and asked for the V5.

Editor's note

Back on the coast, and a storm sat on them for the first twenty-four hours. Oyambre is a long beach with the campsites set back behind it. When it cleared they ran down the road to San Vicente de la Barquera for breakfast, which is the right call: the town sits on a sandspit between two bridges under the Picos.

Editor's note

Five minutes' walk from the beach, terraced and compact: a 5.4 m van fits, and they watched a 7.5 m one end up overhanging the road. Ask for the lower terrace if you are long. English at reception, a shop, good signal, electric in the price with an ACSI card.

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Llanes does not let motorhomes park anywhere but the designated area, which is a walk out of town, and on their day the police cleared it by 20:00 for a sporting event — so this is a day stop, not a night. Worth it for the painted concrete blocks on the breakwater, the old town and the beach. Playa de Poo is about ten minutes away on a bike; reviews say locals charge to park a van there, so leave it behind.

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A big free aire with services, next to a bakery factory. The old town is on the east bank of the Sella and the promenade with the container bars is on the west, so you can walk a loop of the river mouth in an evening.

Editor's note

About 3 km above Cudillero and steep with it — a pool, a games room, good wifi, a full service point, and espresso at fifty cents a pod. Day one is a 5 km walk down to the beach and back, 100 m of climbing. Day two is the 3.3 km down into the village itself, stacked around its harbour like an amphitheatre, with the lighthouse viewpoint above it and the 19th-century tunnels — about 300 m long, following a stream, free and cool — behind. Parking a long van in the village is not worth attempting.

Editor's note

The whole reason to park here: the beach only exists at low tide, and staying opposite the visitor centre means you can walk out at sunset, sleep, and go again at sunrise. In season you need a permit — a QR code with passport details, valid for a 24-hour window. Mid-morning it is packed; at quarter past eight it is nearly empty.

Editor's note

Family-run by a young couple who took it over about a year ago, with a café, a bar, a laundry and the beach two minutes away. The showers are doorless cubicles with rain heads and the block is due a refit over winter. Richard rode a 40 km loop inland from here: Garmin promised road only and still put him on a rough forestry track full of thorns.

Editor's note

A standard city aire about 3 km out, which is a comfortable cycle into the centre — though the old city is crowded enough that you will end up pushing the bike. The cathedral is the end of the Camino, and the square in front of it is full of people who have just walked a hundred kilometres or more to reach it.

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Recommended to them by neighbours on a previous stop, and every row has a sea view. The showers are the best they scored on the whole trip. An amber warning came through on the second day with 60 mph winds putting waves over the sea wall, and they moved off the front row to keep the salt off the van. Combarro is the day out from here: a fishing village built around raised stone granaries, with shellfish gatherers out on the flats at low tide.